Berkman Buzz: September 12, 2014

Secrecy disables many of the mechanisms that other systems use to correct failure dynamics. In the public sector, informed and interested outsiders facilitate robust judicial, legislative, or executive oversight. In the private sector, both the stock market and regulators rely on public information and disclosure requirements to punish error, incompetence, and malfeasance. From defective products to poor business judgment, information flow is the critical ingredient of correction. The internal and external information silos that typify national security and the secrecy and mystique of the agencies all disable the standard mechanisms we use to counterbalance the error dynamics of other large organizations. The complexity and uncertainty of the threats the national-security system faces compound the difficulties so that even insiders—to say nothing of outsiders—struggle to evaluate whether an element of the system is working or has gone off track.

The next "big thing" for libraries to embrace in support of 21st century information opportunity and lifelong learning is 'big data'...Open source tools can allow academic researchers and, increasingly, more novice researchers to locate, scrub, connect, and re-use open data for new purposes. Libraries can be the place where lifelong learners come for the tools to access big data and to find the expertise needed to leverage big data in solving global challenges.

@thecrimson coverage of yesterday's Digital Problem Solving launch http://disq.us/8k2kfh #dpsi2014 @berkmancenter http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/dpsi/
—Urs Gasser (@ugasser)
 

Libraries have, over time, inhabited the roles not only of guardians of knowledge, but of curators, and not merely for their owners or immediate communities, but for the world at large. The curatorial role became crucial as the range of possible things to read vastly exceeded the amount of time someone would have to read them?—?and finding something responsive to one’s query required mastering the baroque art of search. Librarians apprenticed to degrees in information science to know how to find things, and they coupled that skill with a professional commitment to neutrality, or at least absence of bias.

On 22 July 2014, a new cryptocurrency has become available on the market. After many months of preparation, Ethereum finally launched the pre-sale of its very own cryptocurrency - Ether - raising over 25.000 Bitcoin (approximatively $15.000.000) in less than two weeks. But what distinguishes Ethereum from other (more traditional) cryptocurrencies is that it provides a platform for the deployment of decentralised applications which have the potential to disrupt some of the most powerful organisations in advanced societies: those who instantiate financial and governmental institutions.

Facebook now matches your *offline* political affiliation data with your FB account & sells it to political marketers http://t.co/CCmezMZ75n
—Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep)

Global Voices is thrilled to relay that Alexander Sodiqov, a GV author and the former editor of Global Voices Central Asia, has touched down in Toronto and is ready to continue his life as an academic in Canada. Alex flew into Toronto on Wednesday. He was joined by his wife Musharraf and daughter Erica today.

Arrested on June 16 while carrying out academic research in the politically restive town of Khorog, Tajikistan, Alex was released from captivity by the GKNB (formerly KGB) on July 22. Nevertheless, anxiety over his fate grew when Tajik authorities exercised the option to extend their criminal investigation on August 19, with one Tajik blogger suggesting a struggle within the Tajik government might be holding his case up.